Civil Rights

My husband and I have spent the last several months putting together a complaint for the Office of Civil Rights regarding their treatment of our children and of us.  While discussing this today, as we wrap up and ready the complaint to send to the OCR I shared my feelings with my husband about why it is so important that we send this.  I believe this will probably be the introduction to our complaint, but regardless I hope others understand how important it is that we parents look at what is going on at school and that we demand that our districts meet our children's needs.

The law says that I must send my disabled child to school because EVERY child deserves and MUST get an education.  If you are going to insist that I send my child to school then the least you can do is avoid hurting her, and really don’t you believe educating her would be necessary?

If she must go to school then the district has every obligation to make sure that they do not abuse or harm her in any way.  Is it okay to say she “must” go to school and then abuse her?  Dragging her across blacktop like a bag of trash?  Or to cause her so much upset that she does not want to go to the classroom so that staff feels it is okay to drag her to the room as she screams and cries?  Or is it okay to be so incapable of meeting her needs and teaching her so that she becomes so frustrated and upset that she is hitting herself in the face and head hundreds of times during the school day?  Should we accept that this is an appropriate education for our child?  Should we have to enter into Due Process to prove that the district isn’t doing their job in educating our daughter?  And what about the children whose parents don’t know how they are being hurt at school because they implicitly trust the district to have their child’s best interests in mind?  As we did until our daughter was in fourth grade, we had been duped for years.  This is what CVUSD does to every child whose needs they don’t meet.  They dupe parents into believing that they have been educating their child with special needs.  This is a travesty, an injustice, ineptitude, and just one example of their complete lack of regard for the civil rights of children with disabilities.   

Blaming the Victim

A recent article in the Special Ed Examiner

refers to a case I have known about for some time. Sadly, this hasn't raised the hackles of citizens everywhere! You must read the story of a teen with Cerebral Palsy who was molested by school district staff, an aide in her classroom who has continued to be in the classroom after parent complaints and even after this situation in which another aide reported seeing the man lifting the girls shirt and undershirt up to her neck in order do ogle her breasts. We don't know if more would have happened or did happen on other occasions but he has stayed in the classroom. The district has chosen to defend his actions by filing a suit against the parents for allowing her to go to school where they put her in danger. How is this when we must send our children to school or face jail time ourselves for allowing them or encouraging them to be truant? This is just proof of how insane the system has become, at least in one school district. And I have to wonder, is it because the child has a disability that we don't see a community up in arms and getting rid of the superintendent and school board that is mounting such a heinous defense for their inaction? I would hope that no child would be allowed to endure this kind of humiliation yet one of the children most needing of our protection continues to be assaulted, only this time in the courts.